1 case tagged “Judy Clarke defense”
Convicted: Susan Leigh Smith
The lake was quiet when Susan Smith let her car roll in. With her sons, three-year-old Michael and fourteen-month-old Alexander, still strapped in their car seats, the 1990 Mazda Protegé sank 122 feet from shore at John D. Long Lake in Union County, South Carolina. It took approximately six minutes. Then Susan Smith ran to a nearby house and told a lie that gripped an entire nation: a Black man had carjacked her vehicle, her babies still inside. For nine days, America watched her weep on television while a manhunt consumed Union County and innocent Black men were stopped by police hunting a suspect who never existed. The lie collapsed on November 3, 1994, when Smith confessed and led divers to the sunken car. She was convicted of two counts of first-degree murder. Thirty years later, she sat before a parole board via video link and said: 'I know what I did was horrible.' The board voted unanimously to deny her release. Her next hearing is in November 2026. This is the story of Susan Smith: her shattered childhood, her calculating deception, her infamous trial, and the question that still has no satisfying answer. What made a mother choose a man over her sons?
